Voters in student elections have been unable to cast their vote due to a system failure on the UofG life app. Voting for the SRC elections opened this morning but a number of students have complained to The Glasgow Guardian that they have not been able to submit their votes as the app provides an error message relating to authentication.
Turnout has been low for a number of years, with the SRC President last year being elected on just over a thousand votes. Candidate for Vice President of Education Jordan Hunter has already said that he will not hold the position if turnout is less than 15%, a level that has never been achieved and will not be helped by this system error. Voting on the UofG life app affects voting for the GUSA and SRC elections whilst QMU and GUU still hold in-person ballots. The system error raises questions over the legitimacy of the election and whilst the SRC constitution and election guidelines bear no mention of rules regarding a re-ballot, candidates who are unsuccessful will undoubtedly be demanding one.
When this issue was raised with the SRC election team, they apologised for the error and we were told to contact the IT helpdesk who were unable to resolve the issue. IT has said it has passed this matter on to a specialist team. Despite this, we have been told by another student Omar, who is running for the position of Race Equality Officer, that when he asked the IT team about the issue they said “there have been no reports of the UofG life app not working for SRC elections”.
One student told The Glasgow Guardian that they believe the situation is “outrageous given the amount of money spent making the app. The elections only happen twice a year, you think they would be able to get it right”.
Candidate for SRC Vice President Education has told The Glasgow Guardian said “I think it’s disgraceful. It seems to happen all the time. The nominations system was constantly broken and this is no better. There should be an extension of the time to ballot.”
The SRC President, Rinna Vare stated: “We are not aware of any significant issues but we are in contact with the University IT team to keep an eye on the voting platform to make sure everything is working well. If students have any issues with voting using the UofG Life App they are encouraged to submit the support calls by clicking on ‘More’ on the main page and then ‘App support’. We also encourage students to contact [email protected] directly for any further support they might need.”
